If you know films, you know the work of director Sergio Leone, who is credited with re-inventing the western film genre with his “Spaghetti Westerns,” a sub-genre of Westerns directed by Italians and usually featuring a more graphically violent and morally complex vision of the American Old West. Old West (“Frontier”) stories typically “[exaggerate] the romance, anarchy, and chaotic violence of the [latter half of the 19th century in the American West] for greater dramatic effect.” Without ever having visited the United States or even being able to speak English, Leone, who often co-wrote his films, created western heroes, villains, and films that would change the genre forever. Beginning with his classic A Fistful of Dollars, the first of the Dollars (or Man with No Name) Trilogy starring Clint Eastwood, Leone paid tribute to Hollywood’s westerns while, at the same time, significantly humanizing them.

In Leone westerns, the heroes do not wear white hats, nor the villains, black, as was the Hollywood tradition. Leone’s characters do not wear designer outfits, and, whether heroic or villainous, his characters look dirty, sweat profusely, and rarely shave. Leone’s characters are more well-rounded human beings, with both “good” and “evil” traits, making them more complex and interesting. In fact, it is often difficult to determine which characters are the heroes and which the villains in Leone’s films since all characters are “morally ambiguous… appearing generously compassionate, or nakedly and brutally self-serving, as the situation [demands].” Further, the relationships of all Leone’s characters “[revolve] around power” — not around familial or romantic love — and “retributions [are] emotion-driven rather than conscience-driven.”

In Leone’s Dollars Trilogy — A Fistful of Dollars, A Few Dollars More, and The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly — the protagonist, played in each by Clint Eastwood, doesn’t change, although his violent acts often alter the natures of those around him, making them either more dangerous and desperate, or more reflective and compassionate. In Leone’s second major trilogy of thematically connected films, sometimes called the Once Upon a Time Trilogy — Once Up a Time in the West, Duck, You Sucker (originally titled, Once Upon a Time… the Revolution), a western set in Mexico during its revolution, and Once Upon a Time in America, a crime drama about organized crime in New York — the same actor does not play the major protagonist in every film and the setting is not always the American Old West. Instead of the films’ being somewhat quirky and upbeat, the films in this second trilogy are slower paced and thematically darker.

In this second trilogy, Leone concentrates more on the “rituals preceding violence” than on the violence itself, which may have been why some critics and viewers called “slow” scenes in which not much happens. Once Upon a Time in the West (1968) marked a new phase in the style of Leone’s films as well as a new phase in his character development. The protagonists in these films, who are even less clearly defined along the traditional lines of good/evil or hero/villain, actually do change during the course of each individual film’s story, which is “unusual” for Leone characters. Because of its protagonists’ attempts to become different though not necessarily better people, Once Up a Time in the West is one of Leone’s best films and one of the greatest westerns. Its characters are so morally complex that critics and viewers often list it as one of the “greatest films of all time,” not just one of the greatest westerns.

The story of Once Up a Time in the West may seem predictable, with its Old West tropes of wealthy, land-grabbing villain going after the defenseless, newly widowed homesteader, but it is the shootists on opposite sides of this battle that are the film’s triumph. These shootists (sometimes called “gunslingers” or “gunfighters”) are so fascinating and disturbing that they justifiably become the story’s focal point. Instead of viewers’ caring about who wins the land-battle, they become more interested in the shootists and how their characters change.

The film opens with a stunning scene: three men (Jack Elam, Woody Strode, and Al Mulock) terrorize people at a train station and then wait to ambush a traveller. Their target (Charles Bronson), who has no name throughout the film but who is called “Harmonica” because he often plays one.

Harmonica has arrived to keep an appointment with someone named “Frank” who is not at the train station. The resulting shoot-out between Harmonica and the three shootists is the first indication that this film is different from Leone’s previous westerns. Harmonica is wounded during the shoot-out: he is not invincible.

Meanwhile, at an isolated homestead, a widower and his family are massacred. In one of the most startling Reveals in film history, viewers are introduced to Frank (Henry Fonda), a shootist and one of the most heinous villains ever. Frank has been ordered to scare Landowner McBain and his children into leaving so his boss can acquire the land. Instead, Frank kills them all.

That is, Frank kills all the family except Jill (Claudia Cardinale), who has just arrived via train from New Orleans and who has become the landowner by default due to her recent secret marriage with the now-deceased McBain.

Meanwhile, at a roadhouse where Jill is awaiting transportation to her new home, Harmonica, who is pursuing Frank without knowing what he looks like, informs an escaped prisoner Cheyenne (Jason Robards) about the ambush at the railroad-station. The killers dressed like members of Cheyenne’s gang. Because Cheyenne himself has been accused of the McBain massacre, where the killers also wore the his gang’s characteristic dusters, Cheyenne must find out what happened.

The film’s violence increases as the lives and interests of Widow Jill, Shootist Frank, No-Name Harmonica, and Prisoner Cheyenne now all converge on the McBain homestead. Cruelty, betrayal, (implied) sexual violence, and murder become so commonplace that the violence itself becomes less interesting than the natures of the protagonists themselves. For the film’s characters and its viewers, the initial McBain massacre — as well as the reason behind it — becomes merely a metaphorical footnote in the “real story” of Once Upon a Time in the West: how these characters themselves will change because of their interactions with each other.

Fonda was originally hesitant about taking the role of the murderous Frank — of the the wittiest and most caustic villains ever created — and did not accept Leone’s initial offer. After talking to his best friend Eli Wallach, who had worked with Leone in his classic The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly, and who told Fonda he’d have the time of his life working with Leone on a film, Fonda accepted the part.

He showed up for filming with facial hair and brown contacts, believing that his fans would more easily accept him as the bad guy if he looked different than he did in his other films. Leone insisted that Fonda shave and that, furthermore, his piercing blue eyes were necessary to symbolize the “cold, icy nature of the killer.” Fonda, cast against type, became one of the first lead actors to play a villain in a western.

Hugely popular in Europe on its release, though performing poorly in US markets — perhaps due to editorial cuts which were later restored to American versions in directors’ cuts — Once Upon a Time in the West is now considered to be a masterpiece and one the “greatest films ever made,” often ranked in the Top 100 lists of Best Westerns, Best Action, or Best Films.

#ArtSaturday Morisot1878: gave birth to only child, Julie, who was a frequent model for Morisot as well as for other Impressionist painters such as her uncle Édouard and RenoirJulie with her Nanny, also, The Sewing Lesson, 1884 pic.twitter.com/wMZpBSBp6c

#ArtSaturday Cats in artJan Steen, Dutch Golden Age (17th C)(in Steen's art, cats in the scene meant misbehavior on the part of humans in painting, like drinking or carousing) pic.twitter.com/1Ut5BQTKz3

My #WritingTips this morning are for writers on Twitter since some people have been asking me. There are lots of good blog posts on how to do Twitter best, so be sure you check out some of the posts and articles that are available from other writers & authors pic.twitter.com/WSZHft3LNf

This may seem self-evident, but you'd be surprised how many writers don't seem to know this: have ONE account. Anytime a writer or author has multiple accounts, people begin to wonder why and are reluctant to follow back #WritingTips#TwitterSmarter

Use your real name in your Twitter handle, or as much of it as you can fit in the limited characters (15). Put your real name above it in full (50 characters). Don't use the titles of your books, your series, or any characters as Twitter "name" #WritingTips#TwitterSmarter

Put a photo of yourself in your profile pic. We want to feel like we're connecting with another person, not with a book, a cup of coffee, a dog (however cute), or a car. Please be sure you have clothes on or people will think you're a bot (or worse) #WritingTips#TwitterSmarter

Your header should be unique to your account. Use this "real estate," as Rachel Thompson calls it, to show the covers of your books, your awards, your prizes, and other information that won't fit in your BIO #WritingTips#TwitterSmarter

Your BIO should be original and unique. If you read lots of BIOs, you'd be surprised at how many have the same famous quote (w/o attribution) or the same cutesy cliché. Your BIO should be yours alone. Make it unique to you as a writer/author #WritingTips#TwitterSmarter

Make your account easy to follow. Most read BIOs and TLs they're interested in. If you hide your tweets (protected account), no one can see what you write = no follows. If you use #TrueTwit ("the most hated app"), people will Unfollow & Block you #WritingTips#TwitterSmarter

Fill your TL with interesting tweets, not with #spam to buy your books, go to your website, go to your Amazon author page, etc. Think of your TL as a magazine. Would you read a magazine comprise only of ads? Neither would anyone else. Don't do it#WritingTips#TwitterSmarter

Tweet about things other than your current daily word count, your WIP, etc. You can tweet about things other than writing. Let people know what kinds of things you're interested in. Share articles and blog posts on those topics#WritingTips#TwitterSmarter

Let's say you write historical novels and have done a lot of research on a particular time period. Share some articles and posts on that time period, be it Victorian, Roman, Medieval, etc. Lots of people who are not writers love to read history.#WritingTips#TwitterSmarter

Like certain TV shows or types of movies? Use GoogleAlerts to get articles about topics to tweet. When you find other accounts that tweet articles, blog posts, or other things you like, follow those accounts and RT those tweets to share them.#WritingTips#TwitterSmarter

Blogs are contemporary periodicals, so be sure to read blog posts, follow the accounts of blogs you like, RT generously, comments on the posts. The Good Twitter is about interaction & connection, not about sales & spamming people #WritingTips#TwitterSmarter

Be sure to talk to & interact with others on Twitter. Think of it as a dinner party. You want to be the one whom others want to stay in contact with, not the one who spends the whole evening relating the tedious plot of his as-yet-unwritten novel #WritingTips#TwitterSmarter

Follow people who tweet about things of interest, follow those who talk to you, follow anyone who RTs your tweets. Twtiter is social media and that means interaction and communication with others, not being lectured to/at#WritingTips#TwitterSmarter

If you have a website or a blog, put the link in your BIO or in the appropriate place in you Twitter profile. Whatever you do, do NOT send links to your site/blog/books to people who follow you. That's spam and will get you shut down#WritingTips#TwitterSmarter

You don't have to thank people who follow you — try RTing something they posted instead. Whatever you do, don't use a third-party app to thank them (it leaves its own name in the tweet) and don't put in links #spam#WritingTips#TwitterSmarter

Whatever you do, be genuine. You don't have to reveal the most intimate details of your life, but you can be honest about yourself. Rescue cats or dogs? Let us know. Love to take photos? Share some. Be yourself so others can connect#WritingTips#TwitterSmarter

Be genuine, be kind, be human. Going through a rough time? You can let people know without getting all vicious and angry about it. Have special interests or charities? Share them. People want to connect to the human in you, not just to your books#WritingTips#TwitterSmarter

And whatever you do, don't send people DMs (direct messages). AutoDMs are now against Twitter's policies and will get you shut down permanently. But don't send "thanks for follows" that way either. AutoDMs destroyed that venue for most people#WritingTips#TwitterSmarter

By all means, use a pseudonym rather than your real name if your books are published under it. Use the name people will use to look for your books. If you have more than one pseudonym, put others in your BIO#WritingTips#TwitterSmarter

Whatever name your books are/will be published in, that's the one you should use on your Twitter account. Your whole name may not fit in the @ handle/username, but it will certainly fit in the 50 characters now provided in account name#WritingTips#TwitterSmarter

If you have multiple accounts — e.g., for each book, or for books and characters in those books — people will think you're a spammer or a bot and won't follow you back. Even if you're legitimate, you'll dilute your followers by doing that#WritingTips#TwitterSmarter

If you have multiple accounts with variations of your name (author1, author2, etc) people will think you've had problems on Twitter and been shut down. They'll be hesitant to follow you back or to even read your tweets #WritingTips#TwitterSmarter

Francis Ford Coppola’s The Godfather trilogy, along with Quentin Tarantino’s Reservoir Dogs and Pulp Fiction, are some of the most intriguing films I’ve ever seen, if only because they never question whether their criminal characters are good or evil. Instead, their stories plunge viewers deep into a world where doing evil is such a given, it’s the norm. Even in these evil worlds, however, criminals have some moral standards by which to judge the behavior of their fellow thieves, gangsters, and murderers. It is this exploration of good and evil within an already evil world that makes these films so fascinating.

The 1995 neo-noir crime film, Things to Do in Denver When You’re Dead, featuring an ensemble cast of Hollywood heavy-hitters, examines morality, honor, and justice among people who would scare most of us to death if we simply saw them on the street. The film’s unexpected story-delivery and darkly comedic scenes don’t hide its tragic moments, but , instead, lift it beyond the ordinary story of crime-from-the-criminal-perspective to that of a classic. Things to Do in Denver When You’re Dead is a film you’ll want to watch multiple times so you can decide which of its quirky criminal characters you like best.

The film’s premise is a familiar one in crime stories: seriously bad-ass gangster wants to abandon the criminal life, go straight, and earn some good karma in the remaining time he has left, but somehow gets coerced, by someone much more dangerously bad-ass and way more powerful, into doing “one last job,” which, of course, goes terribly wrong. In Things to Do in Denver When You’re Dead, Jimmy the Saint (Andy Garcia) is a former hitman attempting to be a legitimate businessman with his Afterlife Advice services, where the terminally ill record reminiscences, advice, or other final messages for their loved ones. Unfortunately, Jimmy’s non-criminal life isn’t paying well enough to keep him solvent, and his former boss has paid off Jimmy’s debts and now wants him to do one last job.

Narrated by Joe (Jack Warden), to anyone who’ll listen, in a malt shop, the film’s quirky start gives you a hint of the film’s compelling and unique slang while letting you know that virtually everyone involved in the story, but especially Jimmy the Saint, is already a legend.

In those days, you wanted a piece of quim, you knew where to go. You’d go with a big noise guy, you know, a cake-eater. Before you could say “beef bayonets,” you’ve got a bangtail on your arm, sweet as Dutch cheese.

This is not a good thing, even in their criminal world. The Man with the Plan believes that if his son Bernard were reunited with his former girlfriend, Meg, things would be like the good ol’ days, when everyone was happy, and Bernard would be “cured.”

Unfortunately, Meg has a new boyfriend, and something has to be done. The Man with the Plan wants “an action,” not a “piece of work,” i.e., Jimmy is to scare the current boyfriend away from Meg and no one is to be physically hurt, let alone killed.

Because The Man with the Plan, confined to a wheelchair after an assassination attempt, repeatedly emphasizes that this is only an “action” and not a “piece of work,” the viewers immediately know that something is bound to go terribly wrong and that it’s going to effect all the characters in the film, not just Bernard or his former girlfriend Meg.

Despite having met Dagney (Gabrielle Anwar), with whom he’s falling in love, and despite trying to help a friend Lucinda (Fairuza Balk) get out of the street-walking life and go straight so she doesn’t die from drugs or disease, Jimmy goes back to work for The Man with the Plan.

Jimmy gathers together his old gang (below, L-R): Critical Bill (Treat Williams, in his career-best performance), Easy Wind (Bill Nunn), Franchise (William Forsythe), and Pieces (Christopher Lloyd). Then, on a symbollically dark and rainy night, they wait on the side of the highway to scare away Meg’s new boyfriend.

Things go so horribly wrong, in fact, that The Man with the Plan feels obligated to “buckwheats” the entire crew. For this, he hires an outside man, Mr. Shush (Steve Buscemi), who has never failed to complete a job for which he’s been hired.

But in this world, as you might have already guessed, nothing ever seems to go right, not even for the criminals who are punishing criminals who (intentionally or inadvertently) disobeyed other criminals’ orders. In almost any world, it seems, disappointment breeds betrayal, and treachery breeds vengeance, no matter who’s involved.

Though Things to Do in Denver When You’re Dead earned only about $529K (USD, $1M adjusted) of its $8M budget at the box-office, it has since developed a cult-following, earning more through DVD sales and streaming services.

#ArtSaturday Clara PeetersAll of her works are still lifes, and all are titled Still Life, with (followed by some of the elements in the painting, such as cheese, pretzel, fish, etc) pic.twitter.com/umvj53AWOE

First and most important, to read a classic novel in order to become a better writer, you need to read the plot summary first, several times if necessary. No, it won't make you enjoy the book any less. You'll end up liking it more.#WritingTipspic.twitter.com/3XwFQDlpad

Most people who read a book are only interested in the plot the first time around. If you already know the plot, then you'll notice what the writer is doing as a writer. That's the only way to learn from the classic novels. #WritingTips

Assume there's something of value in a classic novel. There's a reason it's been in print for so long, a reason it has hundreds of thousands of fans, a reason it's been translated into so many languages. Assume there's value: look for it in the writing, not the plot. #WritingTips

The writer may be a genius as dialogue, or s/he may be brilliant at developing characters. There are many reasons a classic novel becomes a classic, but plot is not one of them. Look for reasons the novel has become a classic: learn from its author. #WritingTips

Assume the classic novel's writing is good, even if you're not used to it. People don't read the same book multiple times for plot: they read it for all the other wonderful things in the book. Look for them. Identify them so you can learn writing from the book. #WritingTips

Learning what you do NOT want to do in your own book is just as valuable as learning what you do want to do. If the author "interrupts" the story to explain or talk about other topics (very prevalent in early novels), you can learn from the technique. #WritingTips

If there are passages of "authorial intrusion," as it's called, figure out why the writer did it. Is he discussing his own authority as an author? Is he reassuring readers that things will turn out well? Is he establishing the novel as an art form? Know why to learn. #WritingTips

Early novels have many more instances of authorial intrusion than more established novels did. But in the 20th century, modern authors began to "experiment" with intruding into their stories, sometimes parodying early authors, and it became trendy to do so. #WritingTips

Read outside your genre. (And this is true no matter what kind of books you're writing.) If you only read novels in your preferred genre, classic or contemporary, you will never be able to improve your own writing or do something unique. #WritingTips

You can learn just as much about character development, effective dialogue, foreshadowing, symbolism, etc from novels outside your preferred genre as you can from novels in that genre. You may learn more, in fact, because you're unfamiliar with the other genres. #WritingTips

When you're reading outside your own genre, you may be more aware of what the author does well (or poorly) than you are when reading your preferred genre. Learn from what these authors of classic novels do. There are reasons books become classics. #WritingTips

If you're reading classic novels to become a better writer, then it is very important that you read novels written in Points of View you are not used to writing it — or that you do not usually like to read. #WritingTips

You may not like Unlimited POV, for instance, where the author tells his readers everything they need to know about the characters, including passing moral judgment on them. You may like to judge characters for yourself. Look how author uses his chosen POV. #WritingTips

You may like the intimacy of 1st Person POV, where your perspective is LIMITED to only what the narrator knows, thinks, feels, etc. If the author ever strays from his chosen POV, be aware of when he lapses. Learn from the good and from the mistakes. #WritingTips

You will become more aware of POV if you read classic novels written in POVs with which you are not familiar. You don't have to know what all the critics call different POVs to learn from the classics: just become an aware reader, then an aware writer. #WritingTips

Read classic novels set outside the time period, century, and place where you want to set your own novel. Notice when you are grateful for any information the author provides and when you want more information. Jane Austen doesn't describe clothes, for example. #WritingTips

Austen doesn't describe clothing because she was writing contemporary novels: everyone knew what characters wore. That's why costumes vary in the film dramatizations of Austen's novels: the film is interpreting the costumes based on what they want to say in film. #WritingTips

In the contemporary Russia of Tolstoy's Anna Karenina, persons who divorced could never remarry, would lose their money & homes, would lose custody and visitation of their children, and be ostracized from society, and this determines much of Anna's behavior. #WritingTips

When you read classic novels, you can learn much about portraying your own characters' motivations and behavior by noticing how non-contemporary settings influenced or controlled the decisions of characters in those classic novels. #WritingTips

Granted, many of the authors whose work is now classic were writing what they considered "contemporary" novels, so much of what readers now need to know (e.g., about setting) was widely known, but that's how you learn from the classics. #WritingTips

Tolstoy's War and Peace was historical when he wrote it, so much of his irony comes from what the readers, including his own contemporary audience, understood from already knowing what happened to Napoleon and the Russian Emperor. #WritingTips

Anything is a novel which is external to the characters yet influences and affects their behavior is part of setting, from society and family traditions to vehicles/animals used for transportation. Learn to "see" this in the classics. #WritingTips

Child trafficking is a huge problem in China: 20,000 to 200,000 children are sold every year. Sometimes, the biological parents sell their own children because they are unable to pay the fines for having 2 or more children. “Families ill equipped to pay penalties on top of the costs of raising a child—food, school tuition, etc.— sometimes opt to sell their offspring.” More often, however, children are stolen — snatched off the streets — and sold to orphanages or to wealthy childless families for adoption, sometimes for international adoption. The US State Department named China one of the world’s worst in child trafficking in 2017, and while the Chinese government acknowledges the problem, it refuses to release any statistics about its high abduction rates.

When children go missing, government officials often avoid investigating, or, worse, are complicit in aiding kidnappers by giving wealthy families who buy kidnapped children the appropriate legal documentation to explain the presence of multiple children in a country where the government has regulated births since 1980, and though the one-child-per-family law is now defunct, its legacy continues in high child trafficking rates. Worse, parents of kidnapped children are often persecuted as a “nuisance” and a “threat to social stability” for continuing to search for their children and for accusing the government of inaction and complicity in the kidnappings.

You wouldn’t imagine that a film about China’s child trafficking problem would be anything but grim, but director Peter Chan’s Dearest (Qin ai de, 2014), based on a true story of parents who are reunited with their kidnapped child several years later, turns the tables on viewers’ expectations by putting an ostensibly happy ending in the middle of the film. After the parents are reunited with their abducted child, the film becomes more gripping and powerful as it explores the pain and heartbreak of everyone involved in child trafficking, from the grieving parents and the presumably guilty adoptive parents to the kidnapped children themselves. Though some of its subplot are irrelevant, Dearest is one of the most scathing and brilliant stories of a painful and horrifying topic.

The first half of the film concentrates its story on the divorced parents. Father Tian (Huang Bo) runs a small internet cafe in Shenzhen and has many arguments with his ex-wife Lu (Hao Lei) over the best way to raise their three-year-old son Pengpeng (played by multiple child actors).

When Tian is distracted by a group of teen boys fighing in this store, he sends his son Pengpeng off to play with some neighboring children. The little boy gets distracted and tries to follow a car he thinks is his mother’s, and he gets snatched off the street (which is apparently a common way for kidnappers to abduct children in China).

Somewhat reunited by their guilt and despair, parents Tian and Lu begin an initially fruitless search for their son. Since police and other officials are downright obstructive, the couple joins a support group for parents of missing children. Some of the most frightening scenes in the entire film deal with the way the group handles members’ grief, the violence that erupts in these grieving parents when they confront suspected kidnappers, and the terrifying “group-think” when these hopeless parents follow a truck they believe may carry kidnapped children wrapped in burlap bags in the back.

About halfway through the film, Tian and Lu are told that their son has been located, and despite the fact that this seems as if it should be a happily-ever-after moment, Tian and Lu literally kidnap the boy, who not only does not recognize them, but who fights to remain with his “mother,” Li (played by renowned Chinese actor Zhao Wei).

From that moment, the film becomes a more morally complex and painful examination of good and evil as it focuses more on the disingenuously naïve adoptive mother Li, who insists to officials that her now-deceased husband only brought home “abandoned children” whom he found, and as the film focuses on the children Li “adopted” and raised as her own.

Even without my being fluent in Mandarin, it was obvious to me that the most powerful actor in the film was playing the mother who was accused of raising kidnapped children. After Li loses her son (who is, indeed, Tian and Lu’s son Pengpeng) and her daughter, whose parents cannot be identified, Li begins a legal battle to adopt the daughter rather than leave her to be raised in an orphanage with hundreds of other children.

The few sub-plots, such as that with the lawyer and his dementia-afflicted mother, distract slightly from overall narrative, but the film as a whole is gripping and intense. Knowing that the parents find and “rescue” their kidnapped son does not detract from the power of the film. Instead, the film becomes more gripping the instant it flips its protagonists and antagonists: when biological parents Tian and Lu literally kidnap the boy Pengpeng themselves and run from villagers who are trying to rescue him for his screaming “mother,” Li.

Some of the film’s most heart-wrenching scenes involve not the parents but the two young children: neither remembers any mother but their “adoptive” one and neither can understand why they are no longer allowed to live together even though they are “brother” and “sister.”

Compelling and morally disturbing because it deals with both the victims and the offenders of child trafficking, Dearest won awards for Director Peter Chen and for Best Actress Zhao Wei. In Mandarin with English subtitles, Dearest is available to rent ($1.99-2.99 SD/HD, free for Prime members) from Amazon.

#ArtSaturday CorotAfter his parents married, they bought the millinery shop where mother worked to run it themselves, & they made investments. The family always had a good income. pic.twitter.com/ODIsyKw7yz

#ArtSaturday CorotCorot initially worked for his parents in the family millinery business, and he stayed in business till age 26, when he told father that business was "incompatible with him" and asked for "divorce" pic.twitter.com/snL5Xf01jU

#ArtSaturday CorotCorot's parents then gave him an annual allowance for remainder of life, allowing him to live alone, travel all over Europe, paint, and pay for all his materials pic.twitter.com/lIDEb7IpXo

#ArtSaturday CorotThe only portraits Corot painted were those of his own family members, and Corot made copies of each portrait he did: one for the family member, one for public display pic.twitter.com/60i1vZ49WN

My Most Fave Bloggers

Rachel in the OC
by CSA survivor and advocate Rachel Thompson, on surviving, preventing, and spreading the word about Childhood Sexual Abuse

Lydia Schoch
one of the best blogs with an amazing variety of topics, from the Zen of medical tests to her weekly Suggestion Saturdays and Saturday Seven, which feature fascinating blogs and websites

The Bloggess
by bestselling author Jenny Lawson, on depression, marriage, lawn-gerbils, and other random absurdities of life

BrainPickings
one of the most diligently researched blogs I've ever found, written by Maria Popova, it covers writers, artists, books, and all things wonderfully intellectual and artistic

Historical, People & Fiction

Mimi Matthews
a marvelous blog on all things Victorian, from clothes and pets to personalities and other authors who write books and blogs on the same time period

A Writer's Perspectiveby April Munday, with well-researched posts on all things Medieval, from the weight of armor and the mobility of the knights wearing it to what peasants really ate and how they got betrothed and married

Barking Up The Wrong Treeby Eric Barker, with researched posts on living your life better with the principles of meditation, Stoicism, and mindfulness, and more

Raptitudeby David Cain, with an emphasis on meditation, mindfulness, and living life more fully

Elaine Mansfield
with a tagline "Grief is a Sacred Journey," this blog poignantly discusses grieving, mindfulness, Buddhism, and beginning life again after tragedy makes you think it's ended

Writing, Publishing, Marketing

Bad Redhead Media
also run by Rachel Thompson, with an emphasis on helping writers and other small business owners master social media

Red Pen of Doom
by speechwriter and author Guy Bergstrom, who posts on everything writing, to help screenwriters, novelists, and journalists, along with great Red-Pen-skewering of books and videos, as well as frequent instructions on how to survive an apocalypse

Anne R Allen
by authors Anne R. Allen and Ruth Harris, with an emphasis on posts to help writers with everything from writing the first draft to revising, from self-publishing and marketing to social media and handling reviews

Writing and Wellness
by Colleen M. Story, and frequently featuring guest posts by authors, this blog covers everything concerning writers and their health, psychological and physical, from easing back pain to increasing creativity

Join Me on Twitter

Follow Me on Facebook

My Most Fave Podcast

Sleep With Me Podcast
written by Drew Ackerman, and performed by Drew as "Dearest Scooter," this brilliant and popular podcast knocks out insomnia by lulling you to sleep with meandering introductions and ingeniously "boring" stories. Drew and Scooter also do the Game of Drones and Sleep to Strange podcasts

RockWay Press

RockWay Press on Twitter

Copyright and All That Jazz

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